


Sliced

by Vera (Vera_DragonMuse)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Tumblr Prompt, Unhealthy Relationships, serial killer au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-12
Updated: 2013-11-12
Packaged: 2018-01-01 06:34:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1041514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vera_DragonMuse/pseuds/Vera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thor was a detective, Loki was a journalist. Those thin veneers that chipped so easily away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sliced

**Author's Note:**

> for bettiebloodshed, long may she awesome

It doesn’t make sense." Thor rubbed a hand over his eyes, taking the latest cup of coffee from Darcy with a thin smile. "How does one man get so sick?"

"Person." Darcy clicked her tongue against her teeth. "Don’t be gender biased. Evil is equal opportunity. Speaking of, your brother called."

"Loki isn’t evil." Thor corrected. "He’s a journalist."

"Tomato, tomatoah. I told him I wasn’t your secretary."

"You are my secretary."

"Don’t bother me with the facts." She sauntered out, annoyance billowing out around her with the pleats of her skirt.

Thor didn’t bother calling after her. Instead he picked up the phone, turned the dial with worry already curdling in his stomach.

"That was fast." Loki picked up on the first ring. "You ought to teach that girl of yours better phone manners."

"Don't make it sound like I own her. That's the type of talk that makes her cranky. What did you want?"

"Bad day?" Loki mocked.

"They found another body last week."

"Yes. I know."

Thor could picture his brother, behind another desk in another part of town, shirt sleeves rolled up and a cigarette burning at the corner of his mouth.

"Bad news travels fast."

"It does when you have your ear to the ground." Loki sighed, already exasperated. Thor never could be fast enough to please him. "I have information for you. Something that slid by your less than capable officers."

"They’re doing their best."

"Aren’t we all." Loki said dryly. "Buy me dinner and I’ll tell you about it."

And of course Thor would do it. He would always do it. Sometimes the information was even good, useful stuff that caught people. At the very least, it guaranteed Loki got a full meal once and awhile. He had gotten thinner and thinner since moving into his own apartment, honing the blades of his cheeks until Thor felt their slice just looking at them.

So Thor would always go and buy fatty food and listen to Loki stringing him along and fight all the tangled urges that came along with sitting across from his beloved, ink stained brother.

"Don’t let the snake get to close." Darcy warned as Thor packed up for the evening.

But it was far too late for that advice. If anything, Loki was only getting closer, a tight constriction that might one day kill them all.

The restaurant, their restaurant, was decorated in a deep red and shot through with gold with the lights dimmed down dark so the cheap fried meat looked decadent. It was a Loki sort of place. It was where they always met. Loki was already in their corner booth, a glass of ice water melting between his hands.

Thor slid into the booth, their feet knocking together immediately. The whole meal would be a battle of knees and shins, the eventual defeat of their entangling. It made Thor impossibly tired to think about the battles that he’d lost before they were properly begun.

"I ordered already." Loki sipped his water.

"Fine." Everything tasted the same anyway. "Did you get me a beer?"

"Mm." Which wasn’t a yes or a no.

"You have information." Thor prodded.

"I do." Loki leaned back, looked Thor over. "This case is killing you, isn’t it? All those fresh faced girls disappearing. Not sleeping at all, except for a few minutes on that filthy couch you keep in your office."

"He’s escalating." Thor gritted out. He could go longer without sleeping, had perfected the art of insomnia. But he was starting to get that greyed out feeling that went with going too long without.

"You’ll come up to the apartment." Loki decided. "Sleep in a bed for one night."

"I have to get back to work."

"Mmm." Loki said again.

"Vegetable?" The waitress stood beside the table, two heavy plates in her hands.

"That’s mine." Loki smiled tightly. "His is the bloody meat."

"I don’t know why you bother." Thor stabbed into his food with vicious pleasure. The one thing he could do that got under Loki’s skin as much as Loki got under his. "It’s not as if you give a damn about the furry animals."

"No?" Loki speared his broccoli, lifted it to his lips and bit down with those neat even teeth. "I suppose I just get my fill of violence watching you hack your way through life."

"The information."

"It’s a pattern I found that your boys missed." With a grin, Loki signaled the waitress back and like magic two beers appeared, sweating. "I know where he’s getting their names."

"How?" Thor demanded, sucking down a swallow of beer that soothed a deeper thirst.

"Because I’m cle-"

"Not how did you find it. How is he getting the names? I know you’re brilliant, no need to show off."

The compliment served its purpose, Loki’s grin settling into a pleased smile. He finished his broccoli before delivering,

"They all applied to the same secretarial pool at a law firm. Their resumes are all on file at Jotun and Heim."

"How did you figure that out? The second victim was only fifteen. No law firm would take her."

"I found her diary after her parents let me interview them. Your people missed it. She was hoping to catch the eye of one of the junior associates."

"You’ve been interviewing them?" Thor hissed. "They’re grieving parents for God’s sake!"

"Its a story I’m after, brother. And a story that I will get. I don’t have to tell you when I find these things, you know."

The worst of it was that Loki really didn’t have to do it. He could just report it and be the hero of the newsroom with such a scoop. He could ruin the lives of the men who this lead would cast into suspicion. He’d done it before. There was no rhyme or reason to when he helped and when he hindered. It was his chess piece, his queen moving when and where he liked.

"Thank you." Thor said as sincerely as he could manage.

"Drink your beer."

Thor drank three, the salt in the food drying his mouth and Loki’s ready finger in the air to summon another as he emptied them. When he stood to go to the bathroom, his head swam.

"Might as well come upstairs to sober up." Loki suggested, one hand on Thor’s elbow, both eyes on his face.

"Just for a cup of coffee." Thor muttered.

They walked up the shaky stairs to Loki’s ratty apartment. The sounds of the resturant carried upwards, rattling the walls.

"Take off your shoes." Loki ordered, pushing Thor towards the bed. There weren’t any chairs in the apartment or a couch. Like Thor, Loki lived where he worked. This was just a holding place for his body.

Thor sat on the edge of the bed, toeing off his thin soled boots. Then he lay back for just a moment, just to catch his breath, just to be surrounded by the smell of something familiar, something that loved him even if it wasn’t loving.

The front door opened and closed as he drifted and he knew he should get up. Instead he curled onto his side and dragged the blanket over him. Hours later, a cold breeze woke him.

"Only me." Loki put a hand to his back, chill fingers pressed to Thor’s spine. "Sleep."

Thor slept and dreamed of blood.

He woke up with a sour taste in his mouth and his pants folded neatly on on the floor. Outside the rain poured down, rattling the window panes. Everything smelled like burnt coffee.

"Coffee?" Loki proffered up a chipped mug, standing by the bed already dressed. "Out of milk."

"You took my pants off?" Thor took the mug, drank the foul brew leaning against the wall, blankets strewn around his waist.

"Would you have preferred to sleep in them?" Loki turned to the window, giving Thor the view of his too thin waist and too broad shoulders.

"I shouldn’t have slept at all. I have to call the office."

"So call." Loki didn’t turn around. "You know where the phone is."

Thor put on his pants, flushed with guilt though he had no idea for what. They did these things for each other. That’s what brothers did. Watched out for each other. Protected each other.

Loki’s phone was lead heavy in Thor’s hand.

"Oh thank god." Darcy breathed over the line. "I thought maybe you’d actually turned into a normal person and planned on getting a full night’s sleep."

"No." He squinted at the clock, a stately silver thing out of place on the dirty walls. Five am. "What are you doing at work already?"

"Number six." She said tightly. "You’d better come in."

"Another?" Loki asked as Thor slammed down the phone. "Where?"

"I can’t tell you." Thor went to the bathroom, pissed and stared at himself in the cracked mirror.

"Sure you could tell me." And Loki was in the doorway again and didn't it seem like he’s always there even when he’s far away? It was like he was made for thresholds, hanging in them, waiting for something, some sign to go one way or another.

"I can’t. You know I could lose my job leaking to the press."

"Mmm." Said Loki and moved aside just as Thor thought he’d have to push him to escape. "Have a good day at work."

They didn’t see each other for two weeks. Thor stormed the gates of Jotun and Heim, but there was no one volunteering for obvious suspects and nearly every employee could get to those files. The sixth victim, eighteen and pretty as the others, had applied there.

The seventh hadn’t.

"One a week." Thor stared down at the stack of photos, spreading them vivid over the desk. "How is no one seeing him?"

"Maybe they are." Darcy curled up in his visitor’s chair, her heels kicked off and skirt hitched high. Half the office thought they’re having an affair, the other half thought they would soon.

They wouldn't. Darcy was just a damn good cop that no one would hire because she came equipped with tits. Thor didn’t give a shit what she had under her clothes. His solved case files were stacked twice as high as anyone else and it was partly thanks to her, secretary or not.

"What do you mean?"

"Maybe he’s the type of guy people just look straight through." She slid her glasses down her nose to get a better look at the fine print of a form. "You know the type. Professionally not suspicious."

"Sure. 'Nothing to see here' would get a man through if he was clever."

"Not fair really. That kind of illusion." She sighed, put upon. "You shouldn’t be allowed to hide that kind of evil under your skin."

"What happened to gender bias?"

"Please." She closed the folder on one ruined face, then opened another. "Women kill so much more quietly than this."

The rain thudded down, robbing the air of oxygen until they were sipping it along with their coffee and flipping page after page of death captured too vividly. It went right on raining until Thor saw Loki again. Not at the restaurant. There was no planned supper for this grim occasion.

They both stood a room over from the body of the seventh victim, autopsy in progress. Thor’s badge had gotten him in, a folded twenty secured Loki his space. The morgue was a series of bribes and lies these days.

"Don’t be bitter." Loki watched through the observation window. "Every one has to make a living."

"You have no respect for them." Thor grounded out. His teeth were permanently gritted these days, words stuck along with bile behind their damming wall.

"For the dead? No. I don’t. They’ve already had the good fortune of leaving this dreadful mortal coil. I won’t cry for them to make you feel better."

"You could leave them their dignity."

The M.E. slid his knife down, opening her secrets to the air.

"I think its too late for that." Loki stared down. "Have you figured out why these girls yet?"

"They’re young and attractive. That seems to be all he needs."

"Do you think so?" Loki snorted. "Do you really think that this…hunter...goes out into the night and just chooses the first pretty thing that catches his eye? Or is it something more? Something that he seeks out, isolates, waits for?"

"Maybe in the beginning, but it’s too close now. Too many, too quickly. How would he have the time to select them?"

"You’re assuming too much, brother." Loki put his hand to the glass, walked finger smudges in every direction.

"What am I assuming?" He didn’t dare look Loki right the eye. Couldn’t stand to see the patronizing grin, the wicked cold edge to a smile that used to be so genuinely warm. Thor had taken refuge in that smile once. Taken pleasure from putting it on a little boy’s lips, being someone worthy of that young worship.

"That this is work of disorganized mind decompensating. What if it’s a very organized one, only warming up?"

That was the thought that hung there long after Loki left.

It couldn’t go on forever. The body count rouse, the media stirring people into mobs, panic in the streets.

It couldn’t go on when Thor held the truth in his arms after a drunken mistake. Smoothed dark locks of hair away from a blood stained cheek of a teenager, watched wide eyes begin to narrow with calculation. The conclusion was foregone, spelled out in a thousand lines of his private history.

He’d known. Always known. The way some religious folk secretly feared that the afterlife was nothing but rot, that was how Thor had known. Deep under his conscious thought, simmering away until only the thick poison of it remained to seep in and destroy everything else.

There were ten gravestones now. Ten that Thor had tried to save and failed. Even Darcy’s perennial cranky perkiness had faded into exhausted anger. The FBI came in, cluttering up the offices, getting underfoot and making no headway.

"Dinner." Loki demanded, turning up in Thor’s office for the first time in memory. "It’s been nearly a month."

Loki looked rough, stretched too thin and gone too pale. He was a half-erased version of of himself, lurking in the doorway.

"I can’t." Thor said weakly.

"Go already." Darcy groaned. "He’ll just stay there until you agree, so you can save us all the headache."

Thor went because he was always going to go. Always would go. Pulled along by that invisible string that hooked both ways, tearing at them even as it drew them closer together.

They didn’t go to the restaurant. Instead, Loki lead him to the apartment where boxed food steamed. They ate side by side, knees and shoulders touching as the bed sagged beneath them.

"Are you truly worried about me?" Thor asked with a laugh as Loki solicitously handed him a beer. "Are you fussing?"

"I’m worried." Loki said blankly. "You are…a requirement."

"To what?"

"To me."

"What does that mean?"

But there was no answer. Thor didn’t fight as Loki pushed him to the mattress and stripped away his clothes. They were stiff with too much wear. Perhaps in this kind guise, Loki would fetch a fresh suit from Thor’s apartment.

"Sleep." Loki put a hand to Thor’s forehead. "Sleep, brother."

"I cannot."

"You can." Loki lay down beside him, the cool point of his nose brushing Thor’s jaw. "You can and you will."

And Thor did.

But he woke too early this time. Too early to stop that poison from spilling, ever outward. Too early to miss Loki’s soft return. The fall of his stained clothing and the clink of a knife tucked away.

It started with that glimmer of a knife's edge and it ended with a bullet. How else? The two of them hadn’t been born of the same womb, hadn’t come screaming out into the world on the same bed, but from every moment after the one that introduced them, they were destined to end as most people began.

Thor waited for Loki to come to bed. Waited for him to draw up the blankets and cross the undiscovered country that yawned up between them. Waited for the cold touch of skin.

"If I loved you as you’d wanted, would it have been different?" He asked, choked in the darkness.

"No." Loki sighed out slowly, not bothering to retreat or deny. He had never cared about consequences, reckless in his pursuit of the now. "It was born in me as easily as your goodness was born in you. And anyway, you have always loved me just the way I could’ve wanted."

"You didn't want more?" He scoffed. "You always acted as if-"

"Flesh doesn’t matter. Haven’t you realized that yet?" Loki tapped Thor’s chest, just above his heart. "If we had sex right now, if you let me that far inside of you, would I really be getting any deeper?"

"No." And it wasn’t a denial, but an acceptance. If you scratched the surface of Thor, it was all Loki underneath. "You know that I have to take you in."

"I know no such thing."

Loki moved over him, straddled Thor’s lap and stared down at him, two glittering eyes in the dark.

"I do. You’re sick. You’re hurting people. I have to protect them from you."

"And will you protect me from them? Or will you let them strap me to that chair and jolt electricity through me? Will you come and watch when they do? Will you take my last confession?"

"Don’t."

"Why not?" Loki leaned down, mouth so close to Thor’s that they shared each breath. "Why shouldn’t I? Forgive me, brother, for I have sinned."

"You cannot be forgiven if you don’t repent." Thor wanted it all to be a lie. Wanted to go back to foggy sleep and wake to sharp angles and terrible coffee.

"But I’m not sorry." Loki sing songed. "I killed them because they came to me willingly, you know. Each so pretty, so interested. I didn’t have to do a thing to get them where I needed them. So stupid. So careless. And they were only the beginning. I know things, you know. How to build death from fertilizer."

"Why?" Thor groaned. "Why any of it?"

"There is no why." Loki laughed, gentle and calm. "There was never a why. There never is. There is me, doing wrong and you, doing good. There is me running and you chasing. Me kissing and you spitting. There is poison and the antidote, my love. My best beloved brother. And you cannot have one without the other."

Loki’s kiss was full of teeth and Thor took all of it. His gun snuck up to Loki’s chest, mistaken for a lover’s touch.

There was nearly no sound, muffled as it was between their bodies.

Thor lay beneath his brother, still alive, but bleeding out quickly. There were a thousand choices he made in that moment. He knew, the poison in his mind told him, that he should let Loki die. Let him die and eat his gun himself, no good to this world after all of this.

Instead, like a puppet with half-cut strings, he saved Loki’s life. Saved his own. For what he didn’t know.

So they lived. A mocking parody of happy ever after: Loki in his five by five cage and Thor in the free wide world. Justice served, case closed, curtain falls, everyone headed home.

"Good night!" Darcy called out, turning away and shutting the door on him. She had a date with a man Thor hasn’t met yet but probably would soon. She liked to vet her men against him. As if he was a good judge of character.

"Good night." He whispered back.

Visiting hours were long over when he drove up to the prison, but he had a badge and a list of questions. They let him in. Loki, perfectly well behaved, had earned certain privileges. His cash, appearing as if by magic, had earned him more. He came to Thor unbound, sat across from him as the guard waited outside. There's too much space between them and not nearly enough.

"There’s no solid evidence." Thor recited, a speech practiced for a judge and for this uncertain moment. "Not yet."

"There was at one time." Loki lifted an eyebrow, faking surprise.

"The knife got lost. The fingerprints were smeared. The rain washed away our crime scenes." He recited it as if it had all just happened, unhappy accidents all in a row. As if he hadn’t stood over the evidence box and thought about his empty bed, his emptied chest.

"There will be other traces. Harder to find."

"But they’ll let you free in the meantime." Thor sat back in his chair, wished for a beer and for cheap food. For ignorance. "And you’ll disappear."

Loki stared at him. Not yielding a single step. Not giving anything away for free.

"There’s a restaurant that I ate at once." Thor spread his hands on the table, honest and vulnerable to whatever weapon Loki had secreted on him. "In Prague. It’s dark and the food is awful and no one asks questions."

They held each other's eyes, not speaking again until the guard came in to take Loki away.

_one year later_

The decor was red with gold embellishments. Thor walked through its carved door and found a seat at the back, his legs sliding between Loki’s where they’ve always fit.

"I ordered." Loki’s hair had grown long, his skin water thin pale, but he was there. A year of absence. A year without fear or sleepless nights or drinking binges. A year with a promotion with praise.

A useless year between Thor and this. Just this.

"I hope you got me a beer." He took the glass of water from between Loki’s hands and took a drink.

"Mmm." Said Loki.

And somewhere on the rain slicked streets, a body cooled. A siren rang out, but it wasn’t summoning Thor anymore. Loki wrapped one leg around both of Thor’s, drew him closer and smiled wide.


End file.
